This is my very first mailer and my first county. I have followed the steps up to this point from the 1.0 program, and I am wondering if I may have too many in this mailer. I currently have 5485 units. I have a two ideas, I would like to know if I should do any of them and if not, what should I do?

Split up the mailers by land use. Should I only send to the Vacant Land first then the others later? Here is how they break down now
–Vacant Land (nec) – 3455
–Residential Acreage – 1848
–Other – 231

Or I can send out letters to all the people who lives outside of Arizona first, since they are less likely to know much about their land than people who lives closer to the property.

And my last question is, how long should I wait to send out the other half of letters if I do split the mailers?

Hi Moli – that is great progress so far! I suggest that 5000 offers at one time will be overwhelming for you. You still need to be able to handle the and mail that will result from that many offers. I suggest that you send out 1500 at a time about 2 weeks apart. Or you can send out 500 per week. The point is you can spread out the work so that you can handle. Remember, you are also trying to learn the business and build your systems for handling calls, emails, data, and purchases. I would recommend doing the rural vacant land first so that you can learn on the simpler deals.

I have found when there is a land use called residential acreage it is less rural by our standards. Might want to confirm a few from your list. Otherwise it’s just what you want to have the opportunity to buy.

Just send it! Education by fire. Not like you are going out and doing anything else right now. Get ready. Take lots of notes. Answer the phone and call people back all day and research all night. Plan to not have the time to talk to them(this is a good standard to set out of the gate). Say, you want to sell or get off the phone? If they want to sell say ok money is on the way as soon as I am done with my due diligence and if I have any question I will call you otherwise get ready to sign.

Grind them out. If you run out of money schedule them out until after you sell the best ones that come in. Or better yet send out more mail and never get to them.

I love to have big responses. Take your time to close them. Other deals come in along the way. Looking at all the acceptances teaches you what is good and what is bad. If you just send out some here and there the meager response you get do not teach you want is good and bad or not as good. You end up buying what comes in because you paid for the mail and you need to get a return. Seeing lots of responses is much healthier, its lower risk.

Look at Joe Martin. 10,000 offers to get a deal. One deal. The best deal. He skips the rest of them. His average spreads are much higher and his days on market are much lower.

I’m too greedy for that but I love the idea. That is the better direction to go in my opinion. Pareto Principle the heck out of those numbers.

Hi Luke,
I’m new here and am working on county selection and 1st mailer. Just curious if your county selection strategy has changed in this economic climate? I’ve watched LA 1 and am working the process for creating a mailer for rural vacant land/ residential acreage. When selecting the county a few hours out of a major metro area, we’re advised to avoid areas with tons of cheap land for sale and also those with nothing for sale. What is considered a healthy number range of county properties? If it’s all relative to the area, what are positive indicators for you when selecting a county and what throws up red flags?
Thank you!

J Covert
My game plan to pick areas to mail has changed a lot over time. The thing that frustrates me the most is land sitting and not selling. My website is full of mistakes. They should all be sold and gone. I think they will over time but how much time?

If I am swimming in a market where the wind is blowing hard enough where even the turkeys are flying I should sell my good stuff much faster.

Where is that? That is the beauty of this business. I’m not talking about what side of town or what neighborhood in driving distance is hot right now or about to be. I’m talking the whole country. Where are sales going off. Where is there pent up demand to buy my stuff as soon as its on the market. We can target there without leaving home.

That is what I am looking for. Probably have to send more mail and offer more money there. I’m getting lots of acceptances of junky deals. Weeding them out. Boiling them down to the best looking ones and going for it.

You can study the trade data. You can read Redfin reports. You can look at average days on market. You can look at inventories and all kinds of things they all point to the same areas.

Right now Tacoma Washington is experiencing 6 days on market average for houses. Think about that. Not a zip code there or a select neighborhood. I’m talking about hundreds and hundreds of trades a month. Average 6 days on market. Surrounding areas 8 days on market. Not pre corona times but after corona times.

I’m not saying go mail there I’m saying use that as a benchmark. If where you are looking is over 100 days on market and this is 6 days on market i bet there is somewhere in between that is exponentially better returns to direct your efforts. Tacoma has been mail bombed trust me.

There are lots of areas doing volume where there is a lot of data to go off of. There is no right and wrong just some are better than others.

This is a great thread. I sent my first offer letters to 300 owners of 6-7 acre lots and am amazed at all the calls and emails in the last five days. Everyone has been very nice. One person said my $750 offer was off by $260,000 but the rest are saying $2,000 or $750 plus back taxes. One said she wants to keep that lot but I can buy any of the other 8 lots she owns for that price. One said she wanted $16,000 for her lot because that’s what she paid for it a few years ago. So I am scrambling to keep track of responses and do research on each response. Not sure why there is such a huge range of prices in one county. This is awesome. I have no confidence in my ability to understand whether or not something is a good deal yet but this is real and I assume I will learn values as I go. Going to keep researching and will send more offers for sure. I like talking to these guys even though I don’t always even know what questions to ask. I’m like so why do you have this land? Oh, I bought it a few years ago on a credit card. Thought I might move out there. Stuff like that. Education by fire baby!